


With a Pretty Little Blow

by orphan_account



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Heavy Angst, Post-Season/Series 01, Regret, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:54:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22108174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: You may not live on the Southside anymore, you may not dress like you're from the Southside, but we both know the truth: Snakes don't shed their skin so easily.”The words ring in her ears, as loud and coarse as when they were said. A cruel truth she’s tried to hide for years, buried deep in a mountain of secrets on which she’s built her new life as Alice Cooper instead of Alice Mathers. The picture is frayed and cracked, and it’s only a matter of time before her picture-perfect life crumbles to dust.
Relationships: Alice Cooper/FP Jones II
Kudos: 6





	With a Pretty Little Blow

_**Tears fall** _   
_**And the glasses break** _   
_**Inside these walls** _   
_**The floor boards shake** _

_You may not live on the Southside anymore, you may not dress like you're from the Southside, but we both know the truth: Snakes don't shed their skin so easily.”_

The words ring in her ears, as loud and coarse as when they were said. A cruel truth she’s tried to hide for years, buried deep in a mountain of secrets on which she’s built her new life as Alice Cooper instead of Alice Mathers. The picture is frayed and cracked, and it’s only a matter of time before her picture-perfect life crumbles to dust. It feels like she’s modeled it all after the back of a cereal box, trying to be something she could never be. 

Her life with Hal has spanned more years than her past life, but still, the Northside feels foreign to her. She doesn’t feel like she belongs here no matter how perfect her lipstick is or how middle class her clothes appear to be. No matter how many times she bleaches her hair, there’s no changing the roots.

She supposes she’s been blessed that both her daughters have inherited the blonde gene from Hal despite biology dictating the unlikeliness of it. It’s the only blessing she’ll get.  
Somewhere down the line, the truth set in as she quietly despaired for the life she could have had if things were different. If she’d had enough money to go to college and make something of herself; if she’d been enough of a risk-taker to choose FP; if she’d had the courage to tell Hal no or even the truth. If her life hadn’t fallen apart at Homecoming.

Everything seemed so much simpler in high school, where falling in love with the bad boy was fun and exhilarating, and not something you wished was a fever dream rather than a memory. The prejudices that run deep in the town felt non-existent in the halls of Riverdale High where everyone cared about who was going to be Homecoming Queen rather than stressing over taxes or bills.

It was their turn to make mistakes and it feels like a million years ago now that she has to watch her children make the mistakes she made, knowing she can’t control everything they do. She wants nothing more than to scoop her children up in her arms and tell them everything is going to be okay and that the monster under their bed is imaginary and not the secrets she’s hidden. 

She doesn’t know if Polly is making the right choice. She has no fucking clue where right and wrong are anymore. Logically, she knows teenage parenthood is one of the hardest journeys anyone can embark on and she wants to shield her daughter from all the hardship in the world. She shouldn’t have to go through this. And yet there’s a part of her that agrees with Polly. She chose the logical, smart option and it’s one of the biggest regrets in her life which is impressive considering her life is littered with what-ifs and wrong choices. 

She doesn’t know how to protect her daughters anymore.

Either of them. Polly’s about to raise twins alongside attending high school and Betty’s off being a revolutionary. She’s being the defender of the Southside Alice wishes she had been rather than the one to slander them in the news, using them as a scapegoat for every problem Riverdale has had. Seventy-five years of secrets and lies and she fits right in among it all.

But Betty doesn’t. She’s bright and young and full of hope; she wants to change the world and make it right. It’s a hard path, being the voice that people don’t always want to hear and the face of a campaign that would shake the quiet, peaceful world of Riverdale to its core. Alice wishes her daughter didn’t have to do this, that they’d righted the wrong in their generation rather than let it live on into the present. She wishes she’d spent less time stringing along a clueless Hal whilst making eyes at the bad boy, and more time being proud of her heritage and where she came from. Betty’s right in thinking that there’s no such thing as the wrong side of the tracks, but Alice is the one who’s painted that narrative in the papers for years, letting it thrive. Making sure the Serpents would never want her back.

The only thing that’s carried on from high school is the constant fear of what your neighbors are saying and choosing an easy target to distract the gossip towards. She played everyone well in high school, and she’s just as much of a spin doctor today than she was when she’d sit in homeroom feeling like royalty.

Now she sits alone in the kitchen, staring at a broken plate, smashed in anger of what her life is, and waiting for her daughter to get back so she can go back to playing the only role she knows how to. The perfect mother or the perfect cheerleader or the perfect wife. She’d always played stereotypes perfectly. 

None of it’s true. The love ran dry quickly between her and Hal, and they never bothered to fix it. There’s _nothing_ to fix. She’s in love with some scoundrel with a heart of bronze and Hal’s content to just slot happily into a small-town family. The best they’ve ever had was half-empty, and the only good that’s come from them are their two beautiful daughters that Alice feels like she’s ruining. 

It was all just so much easier when she was young and beautiful.

* * *

Staring at the empty holes in his shoes where his laces should be, FP Jones sighs. He fucked it all up again.

He always does. He’s toxic and he knows it, and yet he keeps trying and pretending that maybe one day, he’ll do something right. He’ll be a good husband or a good father or a good friend or a good man, or just not a bad man.

It never works. One by one, he drives everyone who cares about him away from mistakes and cruel comments, and an arsenal of bad decisions just waiting to be made. He married a woman he didn’t love and tried his hardest to do right by her, but there’s probably nothing more heart-breaking than knowing the man you love is in love with someone else, a traitor to the Southside no less. He tried to do good by a down-and-out Serpent by sneaking him supplies from work and lost his job as a result. He tried to resist the temptation of drink, but he’s never had it in him to resist what he wants whether it be Alice Cooper or another bottle or whiskey, so his wife left with his daughter, and left his son to pick up the pieces. He fucked it all up and there’s no excuse.

And now he’s in jail for cleaning up after a murderer. The only way he could fuck it up more is if he’d committed the murder.

It would have been better that way. Jughead might have a better life if he was just gone forever, locked up for life in a maximum-security prison, alongside a myriad of fellow fuck-ups. Maybe someone would do him a favor and slit his throat in his sleep.

He stares up at the flickering light hanging down his cell, wishing he still had his shoelaces.

_**But from outside** _   
_**It's alright** _   
_**Long as you looking from fifty feet** _


End file.
